Governor’s aide upbraids Lariviere for UO overtime plan

Tuesday

An aide to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski has rebuked University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere for allowing UO employees to use overtime to offset pay they lost through state-mandated furloughs.

The decision allowed some unionized UO workers to avoid the pay cuts that Kulongoski and the state government’s largest union agreed to impose on most state employees to help deal with a sharp decline in state revenue due to the recession. And because workers are paid time-and-a-half for overtime hours, they earned their usual pay while working fewer hours.

But Lariviere said he was not avoiding the state mandate to cut spending. He said the UO chose to make other cuts in the budget equal to what would have been saved by furlough days rather than take money out of the pay of the university’s lowest-­paid workers.

“We just did it through operational efficiencies rather than the mandated mechanism,” he said Monday. “The concern was to protect our most vulnerable colleagues in all of this.”

The e-mail, which the Kulongoski aide sent Oct. 1, was the second time in a matter of days that Lariviere found himself at odds with state officials. Just the day before, the chancellor of the Oregon University System sent Lariviere an e-mail chiding the UO president for what the chancellor called a misstatement in a letter Lariviere had sent to UO alumni.

Both e-mails were first reported in the Portland newspaper Willamette Week.

The letters could portend a rocky time for the new UO president as he faces his first legislative session since taking the reins in June 2009. The severe economic recession has knocked the stuffing out of state revenues, and legislators desperately looking for ways to cut spending are unlikely to look favorably on state officials who buck the cost-control mandate.

Tim Nesbitt, Kulongoski’s chief of staff, said as much in his letter to Lariviere on the overtime issue. He pointed out that more is at stake than whether the governor’s directives were followed.

“It is a policy issue and a politically charged one at that,” Nesbitt wrote. “The governor recognizes that the public’s support for government can be eroded in times like these when the private sector is shedding jobs, households are cutting back and tax burdens can feel heavier to bear. That is why the principle of shared sacrifice has an importance beyond its contribution to any agency’s budget savings and why, in times like these, policies that appear to evade our commitment to shared sacrifice for any group of employees can be damaging to all of us.”

Nesbitt criticized Lariviere for approving a plan that allowed some union employees to work overtime to make up the pay that they lost from furlough days. The furlough days are required under the contract negotiated between the state and the Service Employees International Union. The university system negotiates its contract with unionized workers separately, but it generally follows the state contract and included the same requirement for furlough days, which are unpaid days off.

Nesbitt said he discussed the overtime issue with Kulongoski, and the governor wants Lariviere to stop the practice for any furlough days that remain in the current budget period, which ends June 30.

It wasn’t immediately known how many UO unionized workers were able to offset some or all of their furlough days with overtime pay.

Compared with the university’s overall budget, the amount paid in overtime is small. According to preliminary figures from an audit of overtime pay, the UO paid $179,000 more in overtime last fiscal year than the previous year. That’s an increase of 30 percent.

By contrast, the total state allocation to the university will be about $53 million this year. That’s about 8 percent of the university’s total budget of $640 million.

Lariviere said he also wrestled with a fairness issue. The UO has required only its unionized workers to take furlough days; the university has said it could not legally require nonunionized workers — faculty members and administrators — to take unpaid days off because they work under separate written employment agreements that already were in existence.

Lariviere also pointed out that not all union workers subject to mandatory furloughs were allowed to use overtime to make up for pay lost from furlough days. He said his instructions were that in cases where overtime work was needed, the UO should give first priority to those workers who were required to take unpaid days off.

“The mandate was that only appropriate (overtime) needs were to be used,” he said. “Not in every case could every individual be made whole.”

In the other run-in with a state official, OUS Chancellor George Pernsteiner told Lariviere that a UO letter to alumni “mischaracterized” the State Board of Higher Education’s position on Lariviere’s plan to restructure the way the UO is both governed and financed. The letter said the board has endorsed Lariviere’s proposal to decentralize higher education.

In fact, the board has its own proposal that would give universities more authority to manage their campuses that is similar in concept to Lariviere’s plan but that differs in some important particulars. Lariviere said the wording in his letter was the result of a miscommunication and said the UO issued another statement clarifying that the state board has not specifically endorsed the proposal.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Register-Guard ~ 3500 Chad Drive, Suite 600, Eugene, OR 97408 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service